


bloody up my hands

by ImperialEvolution



Category: Catholicsm - Fandom, Christian Tradition Lore & Folklore
Genre: Catholicism, Implied asexual character, M/M, Martyrdom, Mild Blood and Injury, POV Second Person, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, This is a huge leap from the usual but i'm actually really proud of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27875333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperialEvolution/pseuds/ImperialEvolution
Summary: He is, in many ways, like that dragon as he curls into your chest. Or, the Archangel Michael visits Saint George in the midst of his torture.
Relationships: Saint George/Archangel Michael
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	bloody up my hands

**Author's Note:**

> Working title: uh oh, now you ship theological figures (pretty sure that's heresy).
> 
> CW/TW: Lots of Christian imagery (obviously), crises of faith, blood and gore, discussions of death and dying.
> 
> Stay safe and happy reading, y’all!

**i. earth and work**

He is not a beautiful man. He might have been, once, before all of this, before his flesh turned to scars and callouses. No, he is not beautiful, bloodied and salted as he is.

He looks up, such impassivity behind kind eyes, and oh, he is not beautiful. You want to kiss him still, it is weighing on your mind, between your shoulders, where you carry the weight of the world and your wings.

He smiles when he recognises you, of course he does, and there is blood staining his oh-so white teeth. What did they do to him? What did they _do?_

You don’t know what unseemly game of chess He is playing, but you hate that he is a piece of it. You hate it, but angels aren’t known for their questioning nature, and you are not one to break rules.

The only reason you’re here at all is that you practically begged Him for it. He would have just passed it off to some lesser angel, but the thought of it made you sick. So here you are, standing before him, fire and wings, and you ask him to fear you not.

He greets you warmly, as he’s wont to do, and apologises for the blood. It should be you who is apologising, you know this, for every millilitre of blood they have spilt. His back is drenched in it, rust red and flaking under the sweltering heat of the cell.

It is a tiny room, your wings fold at the edges just to fit. You can only imagine how claustrophobic he must feel. You suppose it’s just another method to embroider needling doubt into the fabric of his skin. You fold your wings tight against your back and sit on the floor in front of him.

He confesses that he isn’t angry, into the crook of your neck as you pass your hands, glowing white and shaking, over the sanguine mess they’ve made of his back. That’s fine, truly it is. You and your shaking hands can be rageful retribution enough for the both of you.

For now, though, they are hymnals against his flesh as he mumbles sanguine faith into your skin.

He is biting his tongue on something, though, as his wounds close over, shiny and silver. You’d like to say that it’s pain he’s choking back on, but a part of you doubts it too strongly to let the excuse sit.

His hands are not pretty, where they sit, pickling and anxious in his lap. They are broad and unbearably warm. His circulation is terrible, you know. He’s a furnace of a man, with scarred hands you know would scratch against your skin. Not that you've ever felt such a thing.

He doesn’t say much more, just sits, his knees knocking yours, and stares at the sliver of night sky he can catch in the far up window of the cell. He seems so deep in thought that you daren’t ask. Your heart is breaking enough, just being here.

His eyes are dark in the dim light, darker than pitch. He fingers fidget, absently picking at the scars on his hands and arms. He doesn’t look holy, on nights like this. He looks like a soldier, his hands marred by distinctive swordsman's callouses, the hard set of his jaw and that distant look in his eyes.

He has never been beautiful, but you watch him anyway, set your mind upon remembering every inch of this scene. The only light now is from the setting moon and the sleeping guardsman’s candle, wick burning low.

There is something almost ethereal in the moment that he looks at you, his pupils still wide from the darkness. He is a watercolour version of himself, softer, blurred at the edges, and you know that if you touched him in the way you want to, you would only come away with painted hands.

His hand leaves red flakes on yours as he sets his hand, gentle, on your wrist. He smiles and for a second, you can believe this will end in something other than blood and tears.

(You don’t understand how he isn’t angry, you don’t understand how he isn’t _screaming_.)

* * *

**ii. holy and** **sand**

He is slipping through your fingers, heavy in your arms. You’ve never seen him like this before, never so crushed under the weight of his virtues. They are a weight, you are so certain of that. Why else would he be here, why else would you be whispering His words into the echoing half inch between you?

No. No, your hands wouldn’t be clutching, desperate, wound through his hair if he weren’t so damn _good_.

There are no wounds, not tonight. You were there to steal the poison from his wine, there to watch him lift that chalice to his lips. (And if you stared, then, it was only worry gnawing at your insides, curling through your stomach like snakes.) His skin hasn’t been broken, but his scars are so fresh in his skin, so deep in his mind.

He shakes, as you hold him. You’ve never felt half as helpless as you do now. You bite your tongue and scream at the heavens for him, for help from Him. But all you have is your hands, currently holding him tight enough to leave bruises, just to prove that he’s _there_.

The only light in this cramped cell is coming from your hands, white and glowing, as if there is something you can do about this, as if you could heal this. The light catches in his hair and amplifies the shadows under his eyes. He is falling through your hands and it is all you can do to hold him.

His eyes run dry, eventually, as dry as the sand beneath you. As dry as your lips as your control slips, pressing into the skin of his temple. And oh, you’ve wanted that for so long, but the grit on his skin and his tears on your shoulder was never how you imagined this.

He’s looking at you now like he did when you first met, that same wide-eyed look that you’d pinned down to fear, even as you told him to _be not afraid_. Is he afraid of your hands, now, still pressing into his flesh? Your lips, still tasting of sand and salt?

Maybe he is, deep down, but he surges into your arms, his lips against yours. For every half second that he isn’t kissing you he is mumbling breathless prayer and oh, this is nothing like you imagined.

He tastes like grit and blood and all that is good in His world and you are suddenly, horribly reminded of the Hell he has been living for _days_ now. It tastes like finality, it tastes like _goodbye, I’ll miss you, we might have been good, once_.

He is good, always. You are just an angel, just some fearful, bright-lighted thing, and he is so good. So you kiss him back, singing to the heavens that he’s yours and you’ll be damned before you let this be all there is.

You can’t tell if he’s crying, but he is still shaking, so you pull him into your lap and sell him tiny words and reassurances as his lips shift to your jaw, your neck.

He is hungry, you know, for comfort, for anyone, to be held and nothing more. It was much the same when you dragged him from that lake, covered in swamp muck and the acid blood of that dragon. You know, also, had you kissed him then, he’d be kissing you like he is now. His eyes have that same sanguine shine to them. You were too much in your own head to see it then.

You know what they say about two men, too. And though they were never His words, well… You aren’t lying here. He could never bring himself to lie with anyone, not out of some self-imposed chastity, simply because he doesn’t _want_ it.

He is, in many ways, like that dragon as he curls into your chest. His breath is hot and harsh on your collarbones as the two of you breathe together. He shares that same vulnerability, that of the beast cornered, shares those broad shoulders and, if the bruises on your neck are anything to go by, those sharp teeth.

He asks, in the depths of the night, if you’ll stay.

He feels it too, then, that finality you’re staving off with soft hands and prayer. If he feels your shoulders tighten with that too familiar wrath, he doesn’t mention it. He’s much too good for that.

You want to tell him that you’ll stay, that you’re always with him. You want to say a thousand different things, but you can’t seem to work that rage from your throat. So you pull him closer, wrap your wings around the two of you.

(You’re gone by dawn.)

* * *

**iii. holy and struggles**

This is the final visit you will ever make to him. You feel it, oppressive in the air, as he tells you that tomorrow, he will be dead. It isn’t a question, but you nod anyway. And he just smiles, sweetly, sadly, like he always does, and oh, oh he is beautiful.

You don’t tell him so, you just sit, your back and wings pressed uncomfortably against the wall. It hurts, but less than your lungs do. He asks you, almost ashamedly, if it will be painful. Your chest cracks at that, so you tell him no, not for long, as if he is not so much a beating part of you that losing him might destroy you.

He nods, once, and falls silent. You have the bizarre urge to apologise. But it is not your job to save him. (Not for lack of trying.)

You sit in silence for a long time.

Tomorrow, you will tear the heathen’s temple down, brick by brick. You will let the earth swallow it whole. It will be ugly work, but you are an ugly thing, all ephemeral hands and wings and eyes and eyes and eyes.

There is a sort of poetry to it, really.

Tomorrow, you will pick him from that collapsing temple and deliver him before the king. Tomorrow, he will die.

It is _ugly_ work.

He doesn’t ask for comfort, just sits with his back against the wall across from you, his knees tucked against his chest. You can’t look at him, in all honesty. You fiddle absently with the feathers at the edges of your wings and wish that you could save him.

It is a sweet and holy thing, to die. You wouldn’t know, but that’s what He said, so you cling to it like a lifeline. You turn the thought over and over in your head and try to breathe through the wrath neatly settling in your chest.

By the time you learn to steady your hands, he is looking at you. You feel your chest constrict anew. You meet his gaze and cannot think of a single thing to say. You instead hold out an arm, graceless, fingers curved as if to touch his face. He moves to you, placing himself within your touch.

He lights up under your fingers in a way you were never expecting. Your hand against his cheekbone feels like rapture, and he leans into your touch. You watch his eyes close as you drag your thumb across his skin, and you can feel the way he shivers. It is a visceral thing.

Your hands have always been better suited to worship than violence, better to take his hand and than rip and rend. He has seen more crusades than you ever will, and his hands carry those memories, etched into the warp and weft of his skin. Your hands carry no such scars. You are almost ashamed to touch him; you don’t deserve it and it rings deep within your core.

He doesn’t collapse into you so much as implodes, like some dying star. He is too much, too bright, and he pulls you in until the two of you could be one. He curls around you, or you curl around him, it doesn’t matter, you could write poetry and compose for hours of his dark skin and dark curls and dark eyes, but it doesn’t _matter_. He is imploding, and soon he will be gone. He isn’t some celestial body, no star, no angel, and when he winks out the tapestry of the world won’t _change._

You are sure, come tomorrow, you won’t breathe the same. You’re a celestial thing, you don’t need to breathe, really, but he makes you want to. Feeling his ribs move, the puff of his breath on your skin, you want to breathe with him. You want to take your angry, wrathful hands rip apart a space in the world and just _breathe_ with him.

You want him, in a way you have never felt for anyone in your whole life. You have lived a thousand different lives, and somehow it’s just him, this man. He’s just a man, and you want. Terribly, fatefully, you want to breathe.

He shifts, slightly. You’d thought he was asleep, but his hands shift to your back, carding through the downy feathers at the base of your wings. You forget to breathe.

His hands still and retract, you can feel the apologies on his lips before he even utters them. You shake your head and tell him it’s okay. You don’t tell him that no one has ever touched you so sweetly. You don’t tell him you adore him.

His hands move back to your wings, feather-light and hesitant, and oh, he is _beautiful_. Your fingers trace endless spirals into the skin of his hip and you hope, you pray, he can hear everything you mean in it.

He falls asleep, eventually, uneasily. You stay awake and listen to him breathe. Every time he flinches in his sleep, you are there to urge his dreams in sweeter directions, hands aglow, spilling meaningless words as if he can hear you.

(At dawn, you shake the sand from your wings and rise, all rage and regret. He stirs as you leave. You almost kiss him goodbye.)

**Author's Note:**

> Not gonna lie, this was a huge change of pace to what I was expecting, but sometimes you read an academic paper on Saint George and feel the overwhelming urge to write some fanfiction. The title is taken from O Sleeper by the Oh Hellos, as I've been listening to their albums on repeat for weeks now. As always, hit me up on tumblr @imperial-evolution!


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